


A Healer's Hands Are Always the Bloodiest

by maharieel



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Blood, F/M, Miscarriage, Red Hawke, pretty dark and sad, read with caution, somewhat graphic depictions of miscarriage and blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 19:18:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8908822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharieel/pseuds/maharieel
Summary: What do you do when the blood catches up to you?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the warnings and tags before reading.

She returned to him in the evening, alone, as she often did.

Anders was curled into an armchair, book in his right hand and a small flame in his left when the door creaked open. The fire was doused in seconds and his staff (which was leaning closer than arms reach) was in hand mere seconds after the door had opened, the only thing that stopped him from tossing a spell over his shoulder the fact that Justice had not stirred. Even through the shadows of the abandoned home her gait was obvious to him.

“Just me,” Hawke mumbled under her breath, and he lit his palm again. The orange hues played on her tanned skin in a way that still made his heart _ache_. “You need to be more vigilant. I thought we talked about the magic.”

“And I thought we talked about knocking.”

She held his gaze through the flickering firelight for a second before huffing and turning away to rest her sword against the wall, followed by a small sack of whatever she’d managed to scavenge from the nearby town. The blood along the iron’s edge caught his eye.

It frustrated Anders, her small escapades. The town they were in currently (a small, non-existent speck of houses somewhere on the coast of northern Orlais) had barely noticed their arrival, and yet Elize still insisted on scouting out the residents for any threats before they made themselves comfortable. _Comfortable_ , Anders thought wistfully. They hadn’t been _comfortable_ since Elize had shouted at them to leave the Gallows following Cullen’s too-late mercy (he would never regret it, his actions with the Chantry, but he still felt the guilt of bringing Hawke into it). No town knew them for more than a few days now (if they ever knew them at all), with the road more accustom to their weary steps than anywhere else. Isabela was due to rendezvous with them on the coast, though, and so they’d decided to sit and wait lest risk missing her.

Nothing Anders said would stop Elize from disappearing at ridiculous hours to scout, just as he knew nothing would stop her from cutting down any Templar foolish enough to come within her line of sight. She was a bonfire that, while beautiful, still raged uncontrollably. He loved her for it despite the grey hairs it was giving him.

“Elize,” he whispered, fingers tracing along her bicep.

A sigh reverberated out of her. She didn’t reply.

Anders moved his hand to rest on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said. Her gaze lifted to his. “I’m just . . . not feeling well.”

That made his brows pull together tightly. He had known Hawke for years now, running on a decade, and besides injuries from blades or some other variation of weapon, Anders had never heard of her feeling sick more than once or twice, and even then, nothing more than a slight cold. The only time he’d known her to run a fever was when half her innards had been left behind in the Keep after her duel with the Arishok. The memory sent a chill down his spine.

“Where?” he asked.

He was met with nothing but a grunt as she threw her cloak over the back of the armchair. Her boots were left discarded by the door. In spite of her reaction, he still sent a pulse of magic through her, the blue tendrils curling around her scarred skin like water until they slowly sunk into her.

“Stop,” she snapped, tugging her arm away before he could sense for anything. Anders left his hand suspended where it had clutched her shoulder, lips parted as she drove her piercing grey eyes through him. His mind reeled back to a time long passed, when he’d spied a child fall and scrape their knees in a back alley of some small Ferelden village. He’d reached out, hand glowing a barely-visible blue in the hopes of healing the wound. Instead of being met with a smile and thank you, he’d been met with gauntleted hands and a stern voice in his ear taunting him with the myriad of possible punishments Greagoir would concoct for him this time.

Elize didn’t look at him with fear like that child had, but . . . there was something else entirely hidden beneath the ice in her gaze, something he couldn’t quite place. Her hands twitched into fists at her side before they fell limp along with a breath he hadn’t realised she’d been holding.

“I . . .” she said, eyes dropping to stare vacantly at his chest. “I’m going to run a bath.”

And then she was gone, as quietly as she’d entered, vanishing into the shadows that lined the staircase. The first sound he heard in the empty seconds that followed was the tap being turned on upstairs. He didn’t think the place even had hot water.

Anders remained standing for a few moments before eventually returning to the armchair. Her cloak was cold with a light sprinkling of snow when he clutched it in his hands, but nevertheless he wrapped it around himself as he attempted to find his position from earlier. He’d lost his place in the book when he’d thrown it aside, not that he had really been consuming the story of some long-forgotten Orlesian chevalier. After a while he let it drop to the floor.

Something was wrong. Elize was many things (brutal, harsh, decisive, unnerving) but Anders had always known her to be kind despite the often cold undertones to her voice and sharp edges to her stance. You only had to glance her with Bethany to see how soft her touch could be, or the way she never stood beside but in front, or the way she was always close enough to touch. The Champion was an anarchistic rebel who had torn the world asunder, but the woman . . . was anything but unkind to those who shared her blood, biologically or not.

For her to snap at him was not uncommon. They fought occasionally, often about his magic use or where to rid of Templars next or who played the big spoon on the bedroll. Trivial, empty things that were coated in venom only on the surface. It was her eyes that had shaken him earlier, though. She’d snap and yell and maybe shove him in the shoulder if she stood on her tiptoes, but she’d never glare at him with such a challenge. Never, not at him. Sure, he’d seen her use that particularly intimidating trick on almost everyone they’d confronted during their cursed time in Kirkwall (and even on Merrill a few times). But at someone she cared for? At someone she _loved?_ Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

He was ripped from his thoughts when there was a sudden thud on the ceiling, followed by the sound of scrambling limbs, followed by an unmistakable whimper that echoed down the stairs behind him.

Anders hardly noticed the smashed vase he’d accidentally knocked over as he sprinted upstairs.

The hallway was littered with various articles of clothing Elize had no doubt discarded in frustration on her way to the bathroom and the door was firmly closed. Without thinking he threw himself at the door at full speed, sending it smashing open and into the wall with a loud crash, barely staying on its hinges.

_Blood. Maker, so much blood._

It was the first thing that caught his eye. The tub was filled to the brim with crimson water that was still lapping over the edge in small waves and pooling in the cracked tiles. Trails of blood dribbled down the outside of the tub, clumping at the bottom and . . . _Maker, oh Maker_ . . .

“Elize,” Anders gaped.

She was a crumpled heap in the middle of the room, bare body shivering and twisted awkwardly into itself in agony. And the blood . . . his eyes could barely take in the sight of blood staining the inside of her thighs, her calves, her ankles. He could see small tendrils dribbling down her pale skin to the tile in dark clots. The blood – and what it meant – almost made him gag.

He was on his knees in seconds, more Justice than man, veins crackling blue and white and hands _burning_ as he shoved them against her stomach atop her blood-coated hands. The danger of such open magic so close to town didn’t even register as he threw every ounce of power and healing into the woman before him. Pained moans and cries tore themselves from Hawke’s lips as she writhed in a pool of her own blood.

_We cannot let the mortals die. We cannot let the mortals die._

The words ravaged through Anders’s mind as Justice channelled his power, as the continuously flow of magic into Hawke grew and grew until the room was aglow in blue light.

Time continued endlessly. Anders knew nothing but the blue of his hands and the woman before him and the blood splattered around him. He didn’t notice the crimson that had begun to stain his robes or that Elize’s writhing had ceased, or that the cries of pain had melted into almost silent whimpers.

Through the haze, Anders felt something grip at his forearm. Seconds later he hit the bottom of his mana and the walls of power came crashing down.

“A – Anders.”

Frustrated, he snarled at Justice to give him more and thrust his hands forward again. The blue spluttered and died on his fingertips.

Another whimper. “Anders, stop.”

The last remanence of Justice slipped away and as it did the blue light faded from the room until it was lit only by the fading strands of moonlight that slipped through the window. Anders didn’t remove his hands from Hawke’s stomach, instead leaving them to tremble out of control against her frozen skin. When he bowed his head, salty tears splashed onto his knuckles.

The hand on his forearm went slack until it fell to rest against his knee.

“It’s over,” Elize said, voice thick with misery. “They’re . . . gone.”

He couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze.

From a young age, Anders had shied away from the more offensive schools of magic in favour of healing, partly out of interest and partly out of . . . well, necessity. He hadn’t stuck out like some of the other more unique apprentices had (memories of the one elven boy who’d come from the Dalish stuck with him, memories of the horrified expression on the Enchanters face when the nine-year-old had transformed into a spider during dinner one night and the lecture he’d been given by both Irving and Greagoir respectively, memories of that little elven boy disappearing a few years later amongst rumours of blood magic) but still, he’d made a name for himself early on. There was no point in elaborately escaping the Tower only to step on a poisoned plant or get attacked by a stray wolf and be left to bleed out in the wilderness, alone. And if that wasn’t reason enough, it kept Templars from spewing accusations of corruption and blood magic at him upon his every return, for how could a mage taught in something so pure be capable of such darkness (not that it stopped them towards the end anyhow).

So, Anders had always been a healer. Countless years of mending wounds small and large, of curing illnesses and general poverty in Darktown had honed his skills. That, along with the fact that he had been unofficially appointed the field medic of Hawke’s ragtag group had fashioned him into one of the most well-known and talented healers in the Kirkwall region.

_And yet . . . and yet . . ._

“Anders . . .” Hawke whispered until he found the courage to meet her gaze.

Her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed, their icy-grey visage completely lost to the tears that spilled from them. Her black hair was plastered to her face and despite the scars and muscle she had never looked smaller than she did in that moment, curled before him like a bloodied, broken child.

“How long?” he asked, unsure why he should need to know.

More tears began to form in her eyes. “A few months nearly.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he choked between the sobs that were slowly pouring out of him. “Why didn’t you tell me something was wrong? I could have . . . I could have . . .”

Her face crumpled then and Anders had no room for anything but the crushing feeling in his chest. Despite the blood coating her he bundled Elize into his arms and gripped her so tightly against his chest he briefly feared she might shatter in his grasp right there on the blood-soaked tiles. After a few moments, he felt her entire body begin to convulse again. It wasn’t long before he joined her, struck so agonisingly with the realisation that they had created something together that had been torn from them before they’d even had the chance to know it.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry _I’m sorry_ ,” Elize cried into him until her words fell into rasps into whimpers into nothing but barely audible whispers.

Anders didn’t know how long they sat there in a crumpled heap on the bathroom floor, a mess of blood and tears and sorrow, but eventually he gathered the strength to stand, heaving an unconscious Elize in his arms. He traipsed to the bedroom and, not letting go once, wrapped them both under the somewhat moth-eaten blankets.

That night, his nightmares weren’t filled with Templars or Archdemons or the mess that had been Kirkwall. That night, his nightmares were filled with nothing but blood and the child he had cursed to an early demise without even knowing.

**Author's Note:**

> My first Handers fic, and it's pure angst. I am so sorry for inflicting such pain on them, I am a horrible person.


End file.
